Fisking Christopher A. Ferrara's "The Church and the Libertarian," while delimiting, defining, and defending an Austro-libertarian option for Catholics.

July 20, 2012

Ethics and Capitalism: An Interview with James A. Sadowsky, S.J.—Part 5 of 9

The Distribution of Wealth

Some have said that capitalism is efficient
for producing wealth, and so is an advance over socialism, which only
distributes poverty. A really effective
means of distributing wealth, however, has not been found.

Of course it hasn’t, because the market does
not distribute wealth.

What is the Church’s position on the
distribution of wealth?

As far as I know, there is no official
teaching that holds that the equality of wealth would be desirable. What is wanted is a way to secure for all the
satisfaction of their basic needs, not equality per se. Leo XIII held [in Rerum Novarum] that
“a transfer of private goods from private individuals to the community” in
order to remedy existing evils “through dividing wealth and benefits equally
among the citizens,” is a program “so unsuited for terminating the conflict
that it actually injures the workers themselves. Moreover, it is highly unjust, because it
violates the rights of lawful owners, perverts the functions of the State, and
throws governments into utter confusion.”

To what extent is economics a science like the
natural or “exact” sciences?

I believe it is just like them.

But do you believe it has the same predictive
power

No. Economics cannot predict anything. If you maintain that, in order for something
to be a science, it must have the power to predict, then I would say that
economics is not a science in that sense, but rather in an older sense
of the term.

About This Blog

We defend Austro-libertarianism, both per se and as an option for Catholics, against the misrepresentation of Christopher A. Ferrara's, The Church and the Libertarian: A Defense of the Catholic Church's Teaching on Man, Economy, and State (Forest Lake, MN: The Remnant Press, 2010. iii+383 pp. Foreword by John C. Médaille.) In these posts the book will be referred to as TCATL. Numbers in parenthesis refer to the page(s) quoted from.

Our intended audience consists of

(a) those favorably disposed toward Mr. Ferrara's position, but whose integrity leads them to wonder what might be said against it;

(b) promoters of TCATL, especially certain Catholic academic reviewers of TCATL—for whom the prescription "charity in all things" should have special meaning—but who apparently have forgotten whatever they once may have known about standards of evidence, charitable construction of one's adversary's position, and other elements of the ethics of discourse. If they are satisfied that we have invalidated its evidence and exposed its disgraceful conduct of controversy, we hope they will be moved to retract their ill-considered endorsements of TCATL; and

(c) Austro-libertarians, Catholic or not, who are curious about this book-length attack on their beliefs.

When ancestors of portions of TCATL had appeared ina Catholic newspaper some years ago, we hoped more accomplished Austro-libertarian Catholics would reply. When we approached them about doing so, however, they advised us that that was a waste of time, ours no less than theirs. We are not certain they were wrong.

Apart from this review, promised years ago if the author would herd his farrago of complaints into a book, it is unlikely that the people he’d prefer to engage him in debate will do so. Our exposure of his exercise in illiberal propaganda constitutes probably the closest, if not the only, attention it will get from this side of the fence. On its merits, it deserves a one-sentence dismissal.

We thank the Remnant Press for the review copy they sent upon request, which we defaced with multi-colored highlighters in preparation for this review.

We speak only for ourselves and not for Tom Woods, Jeff Tucker, Lew Rockwell, or any other Austro-libertarian Catholic.